Come have a conversation about how the creative team behind this very funny show workshopped at Artomatic ended up at the GRAMMYs. From a computer mock-up at Artomatic 2004 to recruiting producers at Artomatic 2009 and Artomatic@Frederick 2011, to the week of public workshops culminating in a workshop concert (see it on YouTube) at Artomatic 2012, Artomatic has been central to the development of A Roadkill Opera. The June 2012 Artomatic workshop concert led to a studio recording released commercially on July 4, 2013, with all the sheet music also released commercially and available through your local bookseller or luthier.

Though not nominated, the studio recording of A Roadkill Opera got us invited to the GRAMMYs, which we attended in February 2015. Which led to the January 2016 world premiere, fully staged performances (with sold-out houses) at the Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint in Washington DC. Hear how it happened from the creative team: music director, conductor, and director Jeffrey Dokken, together with Stephan Alexander Parker, who wrote the thing. The opera is new: the story is set in 1988 in the hour before the first professional gig for a comedy improv troupe in Jackson Hole—the Roadkill On A Stick Frozen Foods Theatre Company. The music is classical–from the 1804 Leonora by Ferdinando Paer, one of Beethoven’s direct competitors.